AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Show me.
Concentrating, I focused on wrapping all of myself around that one tether, and the moment Alaric opened the connection—what he saw flashed against my closed eyelids.
A line of men and Fae stretching as far as I—ashecould see in either direction between the split in the short mountain range separating the Wastes from my court. Ten thousand men and Fae. A small legion of Draconians hovering restlessly above them.
The sheer size of Ricon’s borrowed army stole all the breath from my lungs.
Some were armored with sword and shield. Others looked to be… chanting? They held bottled substances in their hands. Drew glowing sigils in the air with their fingers. They were getting ready. Setting wards and drawing strengthening magical sigils like Finn said they would.
The force was no more than five hundred yards from where Alaric stood next to Silas, in our own front line of Fae soldiers.
What would happen now? What were they all waiting for?
The anticipation curdled my bloods in my veins.
What happens now?
They aren’t within reach of our archers… We wait for them to initiate the charge, they have to file through the pass, it’s to our advantage to wait on this side. They are waiting for us to do the same.
It began to snow. The fat flakes of it drifting down from the sky like ashes.
A hair-raising battle cry rang out from the opposing side, and my breath caught.
They charged. Screaming and chanting and sprinting across the frozen ground, their shields out and swords raised.
Silas hollered, “Hold!”
“Hold!”
Alaric drew his sword.
I love you.
And I was thrown from his minds-eye, landing back into my own mind with the force of a catapult. I fell back onto my behind hard, landing with anoomphon the hard wooden floor of the mill. I struggled to refocus my eyes, grasping at the tether, but the connection had faded. It was gone.
“It has begun,” Tiernan said with shadows over his eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Tiernan
The earth bled.
The moment they charged, I felt the vibrations. And at the first spilling of blood, Meloran recoiled and wept.
Liana alternated between ice and fire. Unable to control herself. She wouldn’t let me near her for fear she’d hurt me. She struggled to catch her breath, looking for all the world like she was suffocating. I’d seen that level of panic before. I’d experienced it myself the day I found out my parents would never return home.
The feeling like the world is crushing you. That there isn’t enough air in the room—in the entire universe to fill the gaping chasm inside you.
“Liana,” I said, trying again to get nearer to her.
“I shouldn’t have let them go!”
“Youneedto calm yourself.”
“Get her out of here before she burns the whole infirmary to the ground,” Healer Loris said, and I gave her a cutting glare so deep she ran to the other section of the mill.
As though Liana heard her, she ran out into the street, and I followed on her heels, chasing her out into the cold. I shivered, an icy flake of snow landing on the tip of my nose. I brushed it off. I’d heard of snow, but living so far to the south like I had my whole life, I never thought I’d see it.
